LONG, LONG ago there was a funny old
woman, who liked to laugh and to make dumplings of rice-flour.

One day, while she was preparing some dumplings for dinner,
she let one fall; and it rolled into a hole in the earthen floor of her
little kitchen and disappeared. The old woman tried to reach it by putting
her hand down the hole, and all at once the earth gave way, and the old
woman fell in.

She fell quite a distance, but was not a bit hurt; and
when she got up on her feet again, she saw that she was standing on a
road, just like the road before her house. It was quite light down there;
and she could see plenty of rice-fields, but no one in them. How all this
happened, I cannot tell you. But it seems that the old woman had fallen
into another country.
The road she had fallen upon sloped very much: so, after having looked
for her dumpling in vain, she thought that it must have rolled farther
away down the slope. She ran down the road to look, crying:

"My dumpling, my dumpling! Where is that dumpling
of mine?"

After a little while she saw a stone Jizo standing by
the roadside, and she said:

"O Lord Jizo, did you see my dumpling?" Jizo
answered:

"Yes, I saw your dumpling rolling by me down the
road. But you had better not go any farther, because there is a wicked
Oni living down there, who eats people."

But the old woman only laughed, and ran on further down
the road, crying: "My dumpling, my dumpling! Where is that dumpling
of mine?" And she came to another statue of Jizo, and asked it:

"O kind Lord Jizo, did you see my dumpling?"

And Jizo said:

"Yes, I saw your dumpling go by a little while ago.
But you must not run any further, because there is a wicked Oni down there,
who eats people."

But she only laughed, and ran on, still crying out: "My
dumpling, my dumpling! Where is that dumpling of mine?" And she came
to a third Jizo, and asked it:

"O dear Lord Jizo, did you see my dumpling?"

But Jizo said:

"Don't talk about your dumpling now. Here is the
Oni coming. Squat down here behind my sleeve, and don't make any noise."

Presently the Oni came very close, and stopped and bowed
to Jizo, and said:

"Good-day, Jizo San!"

Jizo said good-day, too, very politely.

Then the Oni suddenly snuffed the air two or three times
in a suspicious way, and cried out: "Jizo San, Jizo San! I smell
a smell of mankind somewhere-don't you?"

"Oh!" said Jizo, "perhaps you are mistaken."

"No, no!" said the Oni after snuffing the air
again, "I smell a smell of mankind."

Then the old woman could not help laughing-"Te he-he!"-and
the Oni immediately reached down his big hairy hand behind Jizo's sleeve,
and pulled her out, still laughing, "Te-he-he!"

"Ah! ha!" cried the Oni.

Then Jizo said:

"What are you going to do with that good old woman?
You must not hurt her."

"I won't," said the Oni. "But I will take
her home with me to cook for us."

"Te-he-he!" laughed the old woman.

"Very well," said Jizo; "but you must really
be kind to her. If you are not, I shall be very angry."

"I won't hurt her at all," promised the Oni;
"and she will only have to do a little work for us every day. Good
by, Jizo San."

Then the Oni took the old woman far down the road, till
they came to a wide deep river, where there was a boat. He put her into
the boat, and took her across the river to his house. It was a very large
house. He led her at once into the kitchen, and told her to cook some
dinner for himself and the other Oni who lived with him. And he gave her
a small wooden rice-paddle, and said:

"You must always put only one grain of rice into
the pot, and when you stir that one grain of rice in the water with this
paddle, the grain will multiply until the pot is full."

So the old woman put just one rice-grain into the pot,
as the Oni told her, and began to stir it with the paddle; and, as she
stirred, the one grain became two,-then four,-then eight,-then sixteen,
thirty-two, sixty-four, and so on. Every time she moved the paddle the
rice increased in quantity; and in a few minutes the great pot was full.

After that, the funny old woman stayed a long time in
the house of the Oni, and every day cooked food for him and for all his
friends. The Oni never hurt or frightened her, and her work was made quite
easy by the magic paddle-although she had to cook a very, very great quantity
of rice, because an Oni eats much more than any human being eats.

But she felt lonely, and always wished very much to go
back to her own little house, and make her dumplings. And one day, when
the Oni were all out somewhere, she thought she would try to run away.

She first took the magic paddle, and slipped it under
her girdle; and then she went down to the river. No one saw her; and the
boat was there. She got into it, and pushed off; and as she could row
very well, she was soon far away from the shore.

But the river was very wide; and she had not rowed more
than one-fourth of the way across, when the Oni, all of them, came back
to the house.

They found that their cook was gone, and the magic paddle,
too. They ran down to the river at once, and saw the old woman rowing
away very fast.

Perhaps they could not swim: at all events they had no
boat; and they thought the only way they could catch the funny old woman
would be to drink up all the water of the river before she got to the
other bank. So they knelt down, and began to drink so fast that before
the old woman had got half way over, the water had become quite low.

But the old woman kept on rowing until the water had got
so shallow that the Oni stopped drinking, and began to wade across. Then
she dropped her oar, took the magic paddle from her girdle, and shook
it at the Oni, and made such funny faces that the Oni all burst out laughing.

But the moment they laughed, they could not help throwing
up all the water they had drunk, and so the river became full again. The
Oni could not cross; and the funny old woman got safely over to the other
side, and ran away up the road as fast as she could.
She never stopped running until she found herself at home again.

After that she was very happy; for she could make dumplings
whenever she pleased. Besides, she had the magic paddle to make rice for
her. She sold her dumplings to her neighbors and passengers, and in quite
a short time she became rich.